A number of years ago, I got really into the films of Akira Kurosawa. Oh, I still haven’t seen all of them. In point of fact, I mostly saw a handful that were based on the works of William Shakespeare or that struck my fancy by their sheer reputation. I mean, my favorite film is Rashomon. But the thing is, most of the Kurosawa films I’ve seen feature samurais. Kurosawa does have other films set in the present. Heck, I was surprised to learn at some point that Kurosawa had detractors who felt his style was too much like Western filmmakers. That said, I know a number of American directors whose work I like and admire hold Kurosawa as an influence, and some of his work was remade by directors from other countries, often as Westerns, and not always with Kurosawa’s consent.
So, I think it’s safe to say that when I got to my first Kurosawa film, I was pleased to see it was one I had heard good things about and, more importantly, had never seen before.
High and Low was, to my knowledge, the story of a kidnapping. It is, but what I didn’t know is it was also a loose adaptation of an Ed McBain novel. The film opens with a meeting of the executives of National Shoes at the home of factory manager Kingo Gondo (frequent Kurosawa collaborator Toshiro Mifune). The other three executives want Gondo to join them in a scheme to oust the “old man” president of the company. The old man wants to keep making women’s shoes that they call “army boots,” but they also want to make something cheaper to increase profits. Gondo doesn’t want to make cheap shoes, but he isn’t happy with the old man either. Consequently, he declines to the general outrage of the other executives. After they leave, Gondo shares with his wife Reiko (Kyōko Kagawa) and assistant Kawanishi (Tatsuya Mihashi) that he has a plan to actually become the majority shareholder and take over the company himself. He’s had to mortgage everything he owns and needs Kawanishi to take a check for his last 50 million yen to Osaka more or less immediately.
But then the unexpected happens: a kidnapper calls to say he is holding Gondo’s young son Jun hostage for thirty million yen. He says he will kill the boy if Gondo calls the police, and of course Gondo will pay his son’s ransom even though such a move will financially ruin him thanks to all those motgages. But then Jun walks in fine. The kidnapper made a crucial error: he grabbed the wrong boy. Instead of Jun, he grabbed Jun’s friend Shinichi, the only son of Gondo’s widower chauffeur Aoki (Yutaka Sada). That changes a few things: Gondo figures now he can call the police since the kidnapper is bound to let the boy go when he sees he grabbed the son of a man who could never afford a ransom that big. But it turns out the kidnapper doesn’t much care and still wants the ransom, especially since the Japanese legal system won’t hit him with a particularly harsh sentence for demanding a ransom from someone who is not in the slightest bit related to Gondo.
This was more or less what I had heard about the film, and it was what I was hoping for. Gondo has to question whether or not he wants to pay the ransom that will ruin him for someone who isn’t his son. He’s unsure, a man who was born to poverty and worked his way to his current position. Reiko thinks he should pay the ransom since it is the right thing to do. Aoki can barely keep things together even as he begs his boss to help. Kawanishi initially argues Gondo shouldn’t since his financial future is on the line but changes his mind by the next day. Can Gondo do the right thing for Shinichi?
Oddly enough, I had thought the entire film would cover this concept. Gondo, played beautifully by Mifune, isn’t sure, but he’s mostly very reluctant. He wants to make sure he isn’t ruined, but he isn’t a monster. Meanwhile, head cop Inspector Tokura (Tatsuya Nakadai) thinks Gondo can at least say he’ll pay the ransom to keep the guy on the phone a little longer, and then later promises to get Gondo’s money back before the bank comes to claim all of his things. It’s a suspenseful series of scenes as the cops are doing everything they can, but the kidnapper is apparently both very smart and something of a sociopath. I was prepared to sweat this out for the entire two and a half hour run time.
So imagine my surprise when Shinichi is retrieved unharmed at around the halfway point. Gondo pays the ransom by tossing it out of the window of a moving train, and this was the first scene where the action seemed to move away from Gondo’s living room. I honestly thought the film could have made for a decent stage play up until then, but there was more to it than that. Once Shinichi is taken home to his father, the film shifts to becoming more about the police investigation to try and retrieve Gondo’s money while bringing the kidnapper to justice. That comment I saw about Kurosawa’s work being “too Western” for some Japanese critics seemed pretty apropos at this point as the film does play out like a very familiar police procedural. Gondo and his family disappear for long stretches, with Aoki and Shinichi getting a bit more screentime as Aoki feels an obligation to try and find the kidnapper himself, much to the police’s displeasure.
Also, Gondo’s plight becomes public knowledge, giving him a lot of public support while exposing his whole plan to National Shoes and costing him his job because apparently no one over there understands what good publicity looks like. However, as well done as the back half of the movie was with the police and their methodical approach to finding the kidnapper, even with a tense chase scene at the end of the film as the cops close in on the kidnapper as he plots to eliminate some witnesses, all without his knowledge that the police are all around him, it was still a lot more familiar to me as an American film buff of a common police procedural sort of story. Oh, it’s incredibly well done, but it’s just very familiar. And yes, it does end with a victory for the police.
It’s hard to say what kind of victory it is though. The kidnapper turns out to be Ginjirô Takeuchi (Tsutomu Yamazaki), a medical intern who was consumed by jealousy looking up at Gondo’s massive house on a hill overlooking the city. The police recover most of the ransom, but not in time to save Gondo from the bank. He does, however, seem to land on his feet at a smaller shoe company that will allow Gondo to pursue business as he sees fit, and he plans to overtake the larger National Shoes. Is that good news for him? Hard to say, but he seems OK. The kidnapper wants an audience, and as a man condemned to death for the double murder of his junky partners, his cocky attitude tries to get past Gondo’s pitying eyes, a move that ultimately fails as he breaks down in fear over his upcoming execution. His bravado fails, as did his plot. Gondo will go on, set back with his personal plans, but he has his family and is still on track to reach his eventual goals. Was it worth it for these two men to do what they did? For Gondo, perhaps. For Takeuchi, it would seem not.
However, as much as I enjoyed this film, and as much as the film was able to do things that no contemporary American movie could have gotten away with–heroin addicts and overdoses play into the plot–I still would have much preferred more of the first act’s moral and psychological work and less of the second half’s police procedural.
NEXT: Oh boy, I’m headed to the first film that I covered before when I did the AFI countdown. I’m going to need to find something new and different to say about 1946’s The Best Years of Our Lives.
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